Brake Upgrade does it need/work better with ABS?

[VPRob]

Hey guys, been reading about brake upgrades (mine is a stock VP V6) and wonder whether it is important to have ABS with a brake upgrade to, say, VE, to avoid lock ups. None of the threads I have read have mentioned ABS at all
cheers

[Vlad01]

don't think it is, ABS can be useful of small pissy brake but when you have large brakes on a relatively light car which originally had smaller brakes it gives you not just better brakes but more controllable brakes with less pedal effort therefore less likely to lock.

I find with small brakes the point of minimal braking and full lock is too close, sort of like no brake or full lock and not much in between (ie 270mm rotors on VN-VP)

The later (10/92 onward) VP V6 had 290mm rotors without ABS and coupled with good pads (eg QFM) are great and are very controllable with no ABS.

Another thing to note is ABS can and often is pad/rotor sensitive and can make the brakes much worse than the same setup without ABS, this is related to the effective braking band as I mentioned above.

ABS tries to compensate for the easy locking and backs off the brakes, the result is bakes that feel like they have faded permanently and don't work for shit. Had this very experience in my mates VR, the brakes just did not work properly even with both feet on the brakes as hard as I could, took forever to slow down and actually faded out completely to the point the brakes didn't do as good as the hand brake.

Solution was tossing the bendix pads and putting something better. problem solved!

ABS is good some ways and other ways not, depends on how you drive and you skills under emergency situations.

I have been driving old cars forever and my newest car is a VP, none of the cars I have owned never had ever had ABS, when I do drive a car with ABS its nothing what I expect and sort of uncontrollable feeling for me to use the brakes, it does what it wants to do based on the conditions of the road and brakes.

I like non ABS brakes cos I like the feel and feed back it give me so I can make my own judgements and makes driving an old car fun and enjoyable, how its meant to be

my 2c

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

ABS is a system all on its own. It doesn't affect the every day performance of the brakes. It only ever comes into play when the system detects wheel lock up, then it will cycle the ABS unit on/off/on/off really rapidly to keep the wheels rotating providing maximum braking efficiency. Once the wheels lock up, you actually take longer to stop.

Having upgraded brakes doesn't make any difference to the ABS system itself, only the way you need to apply the brakes. You will find the car will stop quicker with upgraded brakes with less effort than it would with standard brakes.

[Vlad01]

ABS is a system all on its own. It doesn't affect the every day performance of the brakes. It only ever comes into play when the system detects wheel lock up, then it will cycle the ABS unit on/off/on/off really rapidly to keep the wheels rotating providing maximum braking efficiency. Once the wheels lock up, you actually take longer to stop.

Having upgraded brakes doesn't make any difference to the ABS system itself, only the way you need to apply the brakes. You will find the car will stop quicker with upgraded brakes with less effort than it would with standard brakes.

lol this is now I use my brakes all the time. I pulsate the pedal when braking, Its just a habit I picked up years ago when I noticed I could slow down faster doing this way.

Didn't realize how close to manually ABSing? (its a word now!) I brake.

[aaronevolution]

lol this is now I use my brakes all the time. I pulsate the pedal when braking, Its just a habit I picked up years ago when I noticed I could slow down faster doing this way.

Didn't realize how close to manually ABSing? (its a word now!) I brake.

You can't possibly pulsate the brake pedal as fast as the ABS does.